Within an hour of the transmitting facility’s activation, the cymeks and surface-confined robots had pinpointed its location. While the battle raged in Giedi City, even after Barbarossa had been annihilated, a kill squadron of neo-cymeks and robots was dispatched to the northern sea. They surrounded the rocky, ice-covered island to penetrate the compound and destroy the parabolic transmitting towers.

With few weapons, Brigit Paterson’s remaining engineers could not possibly defend against such an onslaught, but they had no intention of surrendering, either. Inside the main control center, she scanned the skies and sea. “The longer we hold out here, the more lives we’ll save.”

Pasty-faced and drawn with terror, the desperate engineers armed themselves with grenades, pulse-projectile rifles, and a portable artillery launcher and went to guard the quays and aerial approaches to the island.

The machine kill squadron did not issue ultimatums; they began their attack as soon as they were in range. Brigit’s engineers were ready and fired back immediately. They reloaded, making their dwindling ammunition count.

The cymeks and robots were more intent on obliterating the towers than on killing the few defenders. Most of their attack was directed at the frosty structures that pumped a lifeblood of scrambler energy into the sky. When a cymek shot knocked one transmitter offline, the shields began to fade, but Brigit finessed the controls. Her cold fingers flew, rerouting to more stable sections of the tower, and soon she had a functional shield in place again. She didn’t know how long it would last.

Outside, she heard explosions and screams, making her wonder how many of her engineers remained alive. Her screens flickered as the sensors were damaged in the firestorm, and she saw more ships approaching, probably machine reinforcements. A whole squadron.

Then louder detonations rang out in the water, and the cymeks began to scramble. Robot vessels exploded, targeted by oncoming kindjals flown by human pilots. She heard a ragged cheer from a woefully small number of voices. The League Armada had sent rescuers to defend the shield facility.

Weak with relief, Brigit slumped into her chair, glad that this risky scheme had worked. When she got home, she promised she would buy Serena Butler the finest, most expensive bottle of wine available in the whole League of Nobles.

AFTER HEOMA’S MIND-STRIKE obliterated the cymek enforcers, Holtzman’s second portable scrambler knocked out the robots in another section of the city. The Omnius core was damaged and vulnerable.

Surviving robotic defenders mounted a strong resistance, willing to sacrifice anything to keep humans from reclaiming the planet and destroying the evermind. While Xavier Harkonnen fought against thinking-machine spaceships in his giant ballistas, he dispatched four javelin destroyers to help secure the surface. Squadron after squadron of kindjals soared over targets, wrecking the embryonic machine infrastructure, crippling any robots that had been beyond the range of the field-portable scramblers.

Armada troop transports dumped soldiers onto the battleground to seek out and sabotage thinking-machine strongholds. Scanner ships sent messages to rally any knots of human resistance, calling for others to rise up and join the fighting.

In response, distraught men, women, and children surged out of buildings, breaking away from slave gangs. They ran through the streets with any weapons they could find, some recovered from fallen robots.

As the tide of battle began to turn, Xavier issued a set of general orders, delegating responsibilities and mop-up zones to the Armada subcommanders. Then he set out with elite search teams to find Serena Butler.

He flew directly to the island in the northern sea where commando engineers had restored the shield-generating facility. He expected to find Serena there, since this had been her scheme all along. Xavier looked around, studying the bodies with dread, but saw no sign of Serena or the old veteran Ort Wibsen. Nor did he see her blockade runner.

When he encountered Brigit Paterson standing outside in the cold breeze without seeming to feel the chill, she was exuberant with their victory. In a booming voice, she said, “We did it, Tercero! I would never have bet a single credit on our odds of success, but Serena knew what she was doing. I can’t believe she pulled us through.”

Xavier felt ready to melt with relief. “Where is she?”

“She’s not with the Armada?” Brigit frowned. “She left here days ago to intercept your ships and inform you of what we had accomplished.” She blinked, suddenly disturbed. “We thought she’d given you all the information.”

“No, we came because of the message she left me on Salusa.” Xavier’s heart leaped with sudden fear, and his voice dropped to a frigid whisper. “Something must have happened. God, I hope not.”

XAVIER TOOK A small contingent of kindjals with his best pilots. Serena was lost somewhere on Giedi Prime. An entire planet provided an overwhelming number of hiding places, but he vowed to find her.

After leaving the engineering crew on the windswept island, had she crashed? Had she been captured? Wibsen’s service record showed him to be an excellent pilot, and the converted blockade runner should have performed well. But Serena and her remaining commandos had not responded to any Armada transmissions. So many things could have happened.

Bad things.

The Armada had orders for the final phase of the operation on Giedi Prime. Convoys were airlifting survivors away from the damaged government complex in Giedi City. He hoped Serena was not in there.

Ten kilometers above the surface, centered over the citadel that had once been the home of Magnus Sumi, the squadron leveled out, and Xavier knew it was time. Only a few months earlier, in those buildings below, he and his inspection team had been hosted by the Magnus at a banquet.

Now Omnius must be excised like a cancer, obliterated from Giedi Prime.

Circling over the wounded metropolis, Xavier hesitated. His stomach knotted, and he finally gave the order to his crew. The kindjals disgorged their deadly loads.

Xavier closed his eyes, then forced himself to watch the terrible solution. This was the only way to be certain. Even if shreds of the evermind had been distributed in substations around Giedi Prime, the vigorous occupation force would root out any remnants. For now, the humans must annihilate the computer core that cowered like an evil insect queen in the citadel complex, cut off from all its infrastructure, stripped of its machine protectors.

Through the tattered smoke and cloud cover, Xavier watched a dozen high-thermal bombs go off, blazing flashes and thunderclaps over the center of Giedi City, vaporizing the government buildings. For blocks around, even stone melted. Steel turned to ash. Glass vaporized. Nothing could survive.

A bittersweet victory . . . but victory nonetheless.

DURING AN INSPECTION tour two days later, Tercero Harkonnen and his line officers documented the decimation of Giedi City. They already knew what they would find, but the harsh evidence sickened them.

Xavier took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to salve his conscience by reminding himself that Omnius had been defeated. The humans had taken the planet back.

But there was no sign of Serena.